


Walls Come Down

by ArtemisRae



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-13
Updated: 2009-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things that they don't talk about, but that's okay because they've learned how to read each other over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls Come Down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a friend who requested Roy/Ed, devastation. It came out far less Roy/Ed than I intended, sadly.

* * *

There are things, Roy knows, that they don't talk about. There are things they don't address, officially or unofficially, whether or not they both know that they both know it. Chief among them are the things that Roy has seen, and the things that Ed has seen, and the things that Roy knows Ed has seen but that Ed has never bothered to report to him.

Roy's respectful of those boundaries, but at times like these, he really feels as though he should learn how to talk to Ed. It'd been late, and when a call had come in describing a crime scene involving alchemy, they'd been the only two alchemists left in the building to investigate. Roy had tried to send Ed along, but Ed had insisted, and Roy regretted that the instant they were allowed to enter and saw the scene: the circle on the ground, the blood on the floor, and the body that was barely covered by the sheet laid out by emergency workers. There was a hand peeking out for under that sheet.

He took two steps into the room before the picture flashed through his mind: such a similar scene, from years earlier. It wasn't the same circle, it wasn't the same blood, and the body had been buried by the time he'd arrived, but it was close, it was so close, and when he whirled around to face Ed he had the same hard look in his eyes that he'd worn as a twelve year old, the first time they'd met.

Ed had seen worse, in the meantime, he knew. He'd seen Nina, and Scar's work, and Envy's true form. All terrible things – but none wrought by Ed's hand itself. Ed could see it, Roy could tell, could see all the little ways Ed was expressing discomfort that Roy had picked up long ago. There was the change to his posture, so minute, and the slowing of his breathing, and his eyes, those glittering eyes that always burned in Roy's mind.

He should say something, he knew, and more than that, Roy wanted to say something. Ed had been a child, with only the best intentions, and he'd learned a cruel lesson in response.

"Well sir?" some young private who'd been unlucky enough to draw the short straw and take the report approached him, notepad in hand. "What do you think?"

Roy's eyes never left Ed. "The intent was to kill," he declared, and when Ed's eyes flickered towards him Roy's gaze held steady. "Not to create."

Something passed between the two of them. Ed's eyes never changed, but Roy could see, maybe, that his stance had relaxed a bit. "That makes all the difference."

* * *


End file.
